we've been using Claude f*cking wrong on routing too
your $200/mo model handles every call the same way. a yes/no lookup gets the same full chain of thought as a 10-step reasoning task. you pay for both at the same rate.
Jev flips that too.
it's a mode of Jev that doesn't answer anything. you give it the prompt and the schema, it gives back one of three things:
-> ship this (high confidence, cheap path handles it)
-> escalate (low confidence, send to the big model)
-> hand to code (deterministic branch)
each with a confidence score, so your pipeline knows whether to pay Claude or stop there.
that's the whole mode.
-> 20 to 180 milliseconds per decision
-> $0.012 per million input tokens
-> output is free
-> 10,000 routings for around $0.12.
that's not because Jev is smarter than Claude.
it's because nobody asked it to answer the question.
> let Jev decide who answers.
> let the cheap path win when it can.
> let the big model handle only what matters.
the catch: cascade needs a confidence threshold you tune, and the schema has to match both branches.
how to wire Jev-cascade in front of every LLM call + the exact routing config in the article below